


The Fountains Mingle With The River

by Valmouth



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Emotional Conflict, Friendship/Love, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Presents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2013-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-14 07:54:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/834501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valmouth/pseuds/Valmouth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hathaway gets into the habit of taking a half an hour off and wandering down to the river.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fountains Mingle With The River

**Author's Note:**

> A/N : References to episode 'And The Moonbeams Kiss The Sea...'
> 
> Disclaimer : I own no rights to these characters or to the show they are derived from. I mean no offence by posting this and make no money from it.

He falls into the habit of taking a half hour off and wandering down to the river.

The river is worth the walk on a good day. It’s filthy, yes, and treacherous, but on a good day it sweeps like silver against the green and the trees. Perfect country for romance poetry.

Philip is rarely far from the river on good days.

Hathaway doesn’t bother to announce himself any more. On some days they don’t do more than say a few words. Hathaway lights his cigarette and watches Philip, and Philip paints the clouds. Alongside them the river churns on.

On other days they talk. Hathaway says, ‘how are you?’ and Philip tells him in great detail. All very matter-of-fact. Sometimes Hathaway says, ‘what did you do this morning?’ and Philip will answer him then too.

“Do you like smoking?” Philip asks him once, and, “I saw you on television. With Inspector Lewis.”

Hathaway has no idea if he likes smoking. It’s a habit. If he thinks about it, it’s rebellion and security, all wrapped up together.

Smoking makes you taste weird,” Philip says.

Hathaway smiles, surprised and amused by the observation. “Have you tasted any smokers?”

“No.” Philip smiles too, though he doesn’t look at him, and lifts a hand to the button of his shirt, “I mean if you kiss someone who smokes. Jane told me. I told them I know someone who smokes. Henry said that smoking will kill you.”

Hathaway inhales long and deep, and lets it back out slowly. “So can walking down the street,” he mentions.

“Two thousand nine hundred and forty six people died in car accidents in two thousand and seven,” Philip adds.

It’s not an agreement. By now, Hathaway takes this as Philip’s version of conversation- it is a fact, and conversation is about exchanging facts.

“What does the smoke taste like?” Philip asks.

So Hathaway gives him a cigarette. Probably it’s not what Nell would have done but then he isn’t Nell, and Philip doesn’t expect him to be. He pulls his lighter out and sets the cigarette going. He tells Philip not to inhale too late, the smoke’s been sucked down, and the cigarette ends up on the grass while Philip tries to cough it all out again.

Hathaway holds him upright and asks him if he’s okay, just keeps stroking his back until Philip stops coughing and only clears his throat a little.

Then Hathaway takes his seat again.

“It tastes horrible,” Philip says.

Hathaway accepts it as another fact and moves on. If anything, that’s the only way to get through a conversation with Philip.

“Why were you on TV?” Philip asks again the next day.

“When?”

“Monday the 23rd.”

“A professor was murdered.”

“Did you find out who did it?”

“Not yet.”

Philip nods and smiles, quick and distracted as if he’s not listening, and he watches the river come alive on his canvas.

Hathaway waits until the brush strokes pick up again before he leaves. He can’t give details and Philip rarely asks for them, but the reprieve by the river stands him in good stead. Lewis is back at the station, going around in circles that they can’t afford, and Hathaway can’t offer any more insights than he already has.

His mind feels tired; overstretched. He needs the time off but he waits for a quiet moment though he knows there never is one. Before Lewis his life was routine enquiries and neatly formulated reports. After Lewis, he’s had murders, kidnappings, blackmailers, snipers, students, thugs,prisons, painters.

Less than a month after they find Milo’s killer, he gets a suicide on his plate. Will.

Hathaway has no time for rivers or Philip for the two weeks during which the case consumes the last reserves of his mental strength. He’s needed that holiday for too long and his weakness where Will is concerned makes him ripe for the overload of guilt.

When it’s all over and Lewis has saved him and left him in a hospital room for three days, Hathaway gets a visitor.

Philip keeps his hands close to his sides but when the nurse has turned her back, he pulls a packet of cigarettes and a lighter out of his pocket.

“I bought you these,” he says.

Hathaway doesn’t know why he should be surprised; all he’s ever done around Philip is smoke like a chimney. Of course, he’s breathed in far too much smoke in recent days so other people might have brought fruit, chocolate, books. But he’s still dying for a cigarette.

“I heard you were hurt,” Philip says, “Are you okay now?”

“Fine,” Hathaway tells him, and he slips the cigarettes and lighter under his pillow.

“What happened?”

It’s the million dollar question. Hathaway can’t even think of where to start. Not with Philip, at least, who doesn’t feel in the same way that other people feel, and who doesn’t think in the same way that other people think.

Lying in a hospital bed, feeling as if he’s waking up after two weeks’ worth of mental breakdowns, Hathaway thinks it might be nice to feel and think like Philip. No issues with guilt and jealousy, no complexities, no hidden truths and lies.

A throwback, they call him, because his talent is old-fashioned and his behaviour is odd. Hathaway would give his right arm to have that talent. Or excuse.  

He tries to picture himself in some long-gone age when the whole of Europe would have shared his beliefs. Except that that is not really the point. Even in that world, Will would have killed himself and Zoe- Feardorcha- would have... he doesn’t know. The whole world believing still doesn’t make it right.

He spends the night tossing restlessly so when the morning comes he’s far happier to leave than he should be, if only so he can collapse into his own bed and sleep through the afternoon.

Six days after that, he reports for duty. He wanders away for half an hour and he doesn’t go to the river, but he stands in the shade and smokes a cigarette. Then he buys a copy of _Loaded_ and a Yorkie bar, and he arranges himself with careful precision.

Lewis accepts the joke with good grace and peace is declared. There are no more questions. But Hathaway suspects that the conversation is not finished, merely shelved. Policemen do not like ‘definite maybe-s’.

He sees Philip a week later. It’s not down by the river but at an art exhibition by the students. The pen and ink drawings surprise him, but since Philip smiles at him with no embarrassment about the subject matter he’s chosen, Hathaway decides not to let it affect him.

He doesn’t get paid enough to buy beautiful sketches of men entwined around each other but he does admire the technique.

One of the men has his hand on his companion’s waist. It’s a lover’s touch, Hathaway thinks, and it opens a rarely indulged avenue of exploration in his mind. Truthfully it’s not the first time, but he watches Philip’s expression with narrowed eyes for a minute, trying to pierce through the surface to see if there are ulterior motives.

They end up going out for dinner after the exhibition, mostly because it’s late, Philip does not have a car, and because Hathaway is lonely.

They eat sandwiches from a supermarket by the side of the river and drink processed orange juice from bottles and Hathaway thinks it’s the simplest meal he’s had in a year. Philip doesn’t seem to care that the bread tastes like cardboard and the lettuce is wilted, or even that the orange juice is too thick with pulp and too warm.

“Can I try another cigarette? I think I know how to do it now.”

Hathaway doesn’t even bother to let him down gently- “No.”

Philip subsides.

There is a pause, though. Hathaway expects the outraged vibe, the immediate reaction to such overbearing firmness. What he gets is a quick, distracted smile and then Philip saying, “Okay” with no apparent ill-feeling.

And then along comes Shelley; Hathaway has been expecting it.

_Swiftly walk over the western wave, Spirit of Night! Out of the misty eastern cave Where, all the long and lone daylight, Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear, Which make thee terrible and dear, - Swift be thy flight!_

In Philip’s pleasant rhythm, it slips into the night and binds just the right note to the whole evening. The erotic sketches, the closeness, the time, the romance- they all come together and Hathaway wants to laugh because with anybody else he would have tried something by now.

He doesn’t even know if Philip understands sex.

So, emboldened by the night, he asks- “Have you ever had sex?”

And Philip huffs a laugh before he says, “I don’t have a girlfriend. You need a girlfriend to have sex.”

Hathaway thinks he should have known. “Do you want children?”

“No. I don’t like babies. They cry all the time. And you have to change them. You have to teach them right and wrong. I- I don’t think I can be responsible like that.”

“You can be anything you want to be, Philip.”

“I don’t want to have children,” Philip repeats, “I want to paint.”

And really, Hathaway decides, it’s a reasonable reply.

He takes Philip home and then he takes himself home. Work gets busy and he doesn’t see him again for months at a time.

When he does see him again it’s winter, and the days are cold. There is rain and sleet and angry grey clouds in the sky, and Hathaway wonders what the bloody hell Philip is doing out in it, because even if the man can stand the weather, paint won’t. There is no point painting in weather like this and Philip is soaked and shivering.

Hathaway pulls over and tells Philip to get into the car.

Philip is, as always, obedient.

Hathaway refuses to think about all the ways this obedience could be misused. He doesn’t know who looks after Philip now that Nell is gone. He’s asked at regular intervals, but the names seem to change, and none of those names are ever there when he goes to the river.

“I had to go shopping,” Philip tells him.

Hathaway says nothing, but he drives to his own flat first. He lets Philip in, gets him a towel, and then plants him firmly in a chair and goes over the rules of self-protection- “Do not get into cars with strangers,” he says.

Philip looks confuses, and he gives one of his huffs of amusement. “You’re not a stranger. You’re Sergeant Hathaway,” he says. And then, “It’s funny- Sergeant. Like Constable. Only his name is a name.”

Hathaway sighs. “My name is James. Philip, you have to be careful who you get into cars with. And if someone asks you to do something, you have to think before you do it. Whether it’s right or wrong.”

“It’s wrong if it’s a crime.”

“It’s wrong if it hurts anyone,” Hathaway corrects him, “Including you.”

He leaves him there to switch the kettle on. There’s no point in changing since he’ll have to drive Philip home.

But Philip seems relaxed in his chair. Hathaway stands back and just watches him looking around, seemingly curious. And then the pause. He traces the trajectory of where Philip’s head is turned to see what he could possibly have found to interest him.

“Do you play the guitar, James?”

“Sometimes.”

“Are you good at it?”

It’s amusing when Philip asks it. “Well, I enjoy it,” he tells him, “It’s something I do for fun.”

“Nell said she wanted to learn how to play the guitar. She took four lessons. But she got bored.”

There is no answer to something like that. At least, nothing that Philip could understand. So Hathaway leaves it there, and goes to get two mugs of tea.

Philip’s hair is still damp and his fingers are freezing where Hathaway hands him the mug. His sodden gloves are dripping a small puddle onto the carpet and Hathaway picks them up to toss them somewhere where they won’t get him in trouble with his landlord.

Hathaway drops Philip back at his place twenty minutes later. He detours on the way and stops at a bottle shop. He stops at the Italian take-away just two stores down after that. Then he goes to Lewis’ flat and barters his entry with food and wine.

His Inspector is on the phone with his daughter and Hathaway preserves a discreet silence while he reaches for plates and glasses. The fact that he knows where everything is says something about how often he finds himself there.

It’s all about habit. Rebellion and security in equal part. There is no one else that he would rather spend time with. And he refuses to network like Fiona did- conferences and drinks with influential people, just so they could put a pretty face to an ordinary name and remember vaguely that she was clever.

He does his job. He knows what he can do. And yes, in a stroke of career-minded brilliance he happened to say something to the Chief Super to make her think that he was suitable for a bit of patronage, back in the old days when it was routine checks and reports.

Lewis finally abandons the phone for a glass of good red, and they settle in companionably for the evening.

It’s only when they’re done, and Hathaway has turned mellow and slightly tipsy, that his boss finally brings up a conversation that seems more than mere coincidence.

“You see much of that art student- Philip? The painter.”

“Why?”

“Saw you with him once. Sitting by the river at night.”

“I went to an art showing by the students,” Hathaway says coolly, “Thought I’d see how he’s getting on.”

Lewis sighs. “I sometimes wonder what will happen to him. He can’t live on his own like that. And after that girl died... seems a shame.”

“He has friends.”

“Never saw much of them during the case.”

“I see him sometimes. I ask.”

“He’s a strange lad.”

Hathaway turns his head to squint sideways, not sure about the spirit of the comment. Lewis carries a strange set of biases even without meaning to. “How do you mean?”

“Well, the way he talks. He can tell you what he had for breakfast in detail but he never said anything about seeing a man near the river when his best friend died.”

“Well, we never asked him if he did,” Hathaway reasons.

“Most people just think of things like that.”

“Most people, sir. The point with Phillip,” Hathaway says quietly, “Is that he is literal. He’ll say whatever is on his mind. He’ll answer whatever you ask with absolute truth.”

Lewis holds his peace.

Hathaway is staring into space, talking without seeming to even notice what he’s doing. “And the bloody stupid part is he really is that innocent.”

“Laura says we put labels on people and sometimes that tells them how to behave.”

It’s a perfectly ordinary statement, and one perfectly in accordance with Lewis’s blossoming romance with Dr. Hobson, but the policeman is never far from the surface and Hathaway hears the echo of the old conversation.

His lips quirk but that’s as close to a smile as he gets. “Maybe,” he says, and settles back against the cushions, head thrown back to stare at the ceiling.

There is no maybe about it. Hathaway is not going to go into the details with Lewis because there are no details. He does not subscribe to any one label, and certainly that may be out of perversity, but then even stubborn-mindedness does not help him to explain his current predicament.

On a whim he walks into a bookstore the following week. Because it’s Oxford, he finds an anthology easily enough.

He reads selections in between drinking glasses of wine and heating frozen dinners. He falls asleep halfway through ‘Lines written among the Euganean Hills’ and gives up before the end of ‘To a Lady, with a Guitar’. But he finds himself returning time and again to ‘Love’s Philosophy’:

_The fountains mingle with the river,_

_And the rivers with the ocean;_

_he winds of heaven mix forever_

_With a sweet emotion;_

_Nothing in the world is single;_

_All things by a law divine_

_In another's being mingle-_

_\- Why not I with thine?_

Hathaway comes home one evening to find Philip waiting patiently for him on the landing, sitting on the steps with his sketchbook on his lap.

Hathaway has to stop before he can properly settle it in his mind. The first thought is to wonder how Philip knew where he lived; the second thought is to wonder how he remembered. His third thought is to wonder why Philip would make the trip.

“Philip. What’s wrong?”

“I brought you a present,” Philip tells him, and reaches for his backpack on the step above him.

“A present?”

“Yes. For Christmas. Nell said I had to give my friends presents at Christmas. She gave me a new sketchbook last year.”

James leans his back against the wall and breathes out slowly. He watches Philip’s hands, slightly blue with cold even in the dim light, and then he pushes himself off the wall when he reaches his decision.

“You can give it to me inside. How long have you been sitting out here?”

Philip doesn’t usually wear a watch but he is wearing one now, and he holds his wrist up slightly as he says, “Twenty eight minutes,” with the same gentle unconcern he shows towards most things.

Hathaway finds himself relieved that it’s not longer than that.

He gets them both through the door and his fingers reach automatically for the knot on his tie. But his attention is on Philip, who puts his backpack down and starts to take something square and thin wrapped in brown paper out of his bag.

Hathaway takes it with a smile, and it really is already obvious what it will contain. A small part of him thinks cynically that he will now have a tidy investment for the future, should Philip’s talent translate to fame.

Hathaway expects a landscape, or clouds. He expects a portrait even, since he never was given the sketch Philip made of him when they first met. He doesn’t expect one of the pen and ink pieces from Philip’s exhibition.

He is more than a little bemused to find himself holding something so homoerotic, but his eyes trace the line of an arm tapering down to a wrist and a hand with fingers holding on to a waist. A lover’s touch, he thinks inadvertently.

He feels Philip move, and absently he has already noted that Philip is moving towards him, but he doesn’t even look up until he feels the kiss on his cheek.

Then he is shocked into movement, and he almost drops the sketch, but Philip has already turned away and is gathering his backpack. He doesn’t look at Hathaway, and he merely says ‘goodnight’ before he shoulders his burdens and begins to walk to the door.

Hathaway only just manages to stop him by thrusting an arm out in time.

“Wait,” he says quickly.

Philip holds still politely.

But a second passes while Hathaway thinks of what to say. He tries a few different sentences in his head but none of them seem right.

And then Philip shifts against his arm and asks cautiously, “Are you angry that I kissed you?”

“No.”

“Nell said I have to ask first before I kiss anyone but I thought you wouldn’t mind. Are you attracted to men?”

Hathaway blinks. “Are you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never wanted to kiss a man before. But I like you.”

“Philip, this really wouldn’t work, you know. I’m flattered, but I’m not right for you.” He drops his arm.

“Oh. That’s alright, then.” Philip sounds softly wistful, but with no hint of regret or disappointment. “Goodnight.”

“Wait. I’ll drive you home,” Hathaway tells him. He leaves Philip no room to argue, so Philip doesn’t. He puts the sketch down on the nearest flat surface and he pulls his keys back out of his pocket.

The drive continues in near silence, but it’s as he turns into Philip’s street that Philip pipes up- “Will you still come to the river?”

And Hathaway doesn’t answer. There is nothing to say. Because he will. The river and the clouds and the green trees are perfect for romance poetry, if for nothing else.


End file.
